Relief as Kenya avoids doping ban from World Athletics

CS for Youth, Affairs, Sports and the Arts Ababu Namwamba address the media while flanked with AK officials at Kenya National Library head offices on December 1, 2022 after Kenya escaped athletics ban over rising cases of doping in the country.( Kelly Ayodi, Standard)

Kenya has avoided been sanction by World Athletics for the increasing number of doping cases in the country.

This is after the government moved to increase anti-doping funding with an allocation of Sh619 million annually for the next five years.
World Athletics President Seb Coe said that the funding will help increase the number of tests, investigations besides bolstering the already

comprehensive education programs by Athletics Kenya and Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK).

Addressing a conference after the World Athletics Council meeting in Rome, Italy on Wednesday, Coe said that its arm of integrity, Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), will now work closely with Kenya to implement the next phase of the war against doping.

"The Kenyan federation and government feel this (doping) has been a disfiguring period in what should have been a Herculean period for Kenyan athletics," Coe said after a World Athletics Council meeting in Rome.

"But I'm really delighted because all the stakeholders that matter, both domestically and internationally, are now aligned to do everything we can to resolve this issue."

Sports CS Ababu Namwamba HAD on Wednesday last week wrote to Coe detailing Kenya's progress in the war against the doping scourge as he announced the increase in funding.

More than 30 Kenyan athletes, mostly elite, have been suspended in the past one year for flouting various anti-doping rules.

In 2016, World Athletics placed Kenya among four countries in 'Category A', the others being Ethiopia, Belarus and Ukraine.
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